Communication
Launching a communications advisory
It’s official! Otter Advisory 2.0 is now live. I’ve worn many hats in my career: crime reporter, technical writer, freelance ...
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HRTech
The deck isn't where it's at. Advice for founders pitching to VC.
I have seen 1000s of software pitches, as a Gartner analyst, and now as a VC. Today most founders...
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HRTech
HRTECH in Las Vegas
No, this isn't Paris. I'll be there in October. It is Las Vegas. I'll be there on 13th to 16th of...
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Communication
Understanding change mindsets
Has your leadership team decided on an important change programme and you can’t get employees...
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Communication
Why leaders avoid comms
Communicating should be as easy as breathing. After all, it is something we all do. It is part of...
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Communication
Becoming a non-executive director
I want to work on boards as a non-executive director. Having worked as an executive (SAP) and now...
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Communication
Comms champions - the leaders who are acing it
It's important to highlight leaders who are doing an incredible job with their communications....
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Communication
The science of engagement - how to break through the noise
I see companies with great products. They are designing new categories. Their customers love them....
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Communication
Hobbits rule. Or, it’s not all PR, people
Companies that weight their communications budgets towards PR are ignoring their most important...
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Communication
Launching a communications advisory
It’s official! Otter Advisory 2.0 is now live. I’ve worn many hats in my career: crime reporter,...
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HRTech
What's next for Otter Advisory?
In October 2018 I started Otter Advisory with the aim of helping future of work/HR tech companies...
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HRTech
Paris and the future of work: Acadian Venture's investment in Fifty.
I’ve become very fond of Paris. I’ve probably been there 20 times or so over the years. My first...
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HRTech
Ask Acadian: Having Effective Dates and Permissions in HRtech!
Our firm is a bit unusual, in that Jason and I spent most of our careers working in HRtech before...
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HRTech
Why Acadian invested in Techwolf’s Series A.
cross posted on Acadian Insights. Ghent is a beautiful city in Belgium, with a storied history,...
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HRTech
HRTECH, VC, Berlin, Mexico City and an Acadian Ventures investment
I'm going to Berlin in June, I'll be attending a VC/LP conference. Jason is coming over, and it...
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HRTech
I'm becoming a Venture Capitalist
When I left SAP, one of the first things I did was to invest in an unproven venture capital fund...
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HRTech
Demo Data matters: Advice for #HRtech vendors.
(via https://chicagolandhomestaging.com/home-staging-transformation-burr-ridge/)
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It is done.
I'm happy to report the #DIPSI is done. I've made new friends, both in the student cohort and...
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HRTech
Culture: Why it matters in your HRTECH company.
Last week I was in Cascais, Portugal. It is a beautiful place. Running along the coast road in the...
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HRTech
What's your theory? Applying the Value Lab to HRTECH.
I'm sitting in a cafe in Florence writing this. 500 years ago Florence was the centre of so much...
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HRTech
A Product Management lesson from the Eiffel Tower
I gave a talk this week on HR TECH architecture, and I riffed a bit about Eiffel Tower. Have a read...
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HRTech
Talking about HRTECH Architecture at HR.com
I used to do quite a lot of presentations and public speaking, at SAP and at Gartner.
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HRTech
Continuous Discovery, HRTECH Product Management and Kangaroos
I've stolen a bit of a very old post here, and reworked it.
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HRTech
HR TECH startups: beware the massive company deal.
This post was triggered by something I read on LinkedIn the other day
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HRTech
Product Management with Holger Mueller of Constellation Research.
I've known Holger for ages. I've worked with him in product and as an analyst. He knows heaps about...
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HRTech
Delivering a compelling product presentation or panel discussion
I should be writing something about HRTECH today, but I got distracted.
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HRTech
Product Management and Open Source
Earlier this year (last semester) I had the pleasure of helping out Prof Dirk Riehle with his...
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HRTech
German payroll gets interesting.
Payroll was where it all started. Back in 1951. The first business use of computer software. The...
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HRTech
What Enterprise Application vendors can learn from SME: 'dev ecosystems'
Alternative title: We are going on a bear hunt with Kafka.
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HRTech
SaaS and the Sex Pistols (yes, I know this will confuse the SEO).
"Listen, I this is absolutely awesome content and I can't believe there were so few people here,...
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HRTech
The SaaS Product Power Breakfast Podcast is now available
(this iPhone pro takes awesome pics)
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HRTech
SaaS Product Power Breakfast #4. With special guest Anshu Sharma!
Dave and I are getting into the swing of the power breakfast thing on clubhouse. Every Thursday,...
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HRTech
Incumbents aren't always incumbent. The case of Employee Communications.
Don't be afraid of the establishment A start up leader told me the other day that they didn‘t want...
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HRTech
The second SaaS product power breakfast on clubhouse. Thomas interviews Dave
The SaaS Product Power Breakfast Second Edition. This week’s product power breakfast will, in...
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HRTech
HRTECH Product Managers: Decouple Application and UI Now. Learn from Disney!
I think about user experiences and user interfaces a lot, but I'm not a designer. I buy a lot of...
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HRTech
SaaS Product Power Breakfasts, Thursdays at 8 AM Pacific on Clubhouse
So I'm going to give this Clubhouse thing a spin. Dave Kellogg and I are going to be doing a show...
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HRTech
A new website and an HRTECH newsletter
Time flies. Having been in business for over 2 years, I figured it was time to re-do the website,...
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HRTech
HR departments. Include M&A scenarios in your HRTECH planning.
I’ve been involved directly and indirectly in M&A in some form or other throughout my career. I...
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HRTech
Strategy in nascent markets: Utmost and the extended workforce.
My regular merry band of readers may remember I’m spending time studying strategy. I figured as I...
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The Carlsberg of product managers joins Unit4.
Carlsberg ad. Carlsberg beer has/had the tongue in check tagline, “probably the best beer in the...
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.webp)
Workday and Peakon. My take.
Workday agreed to acquire Peakon yesterday. There is an obvious logic to this deal. Engagement...
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A guest lecture on Product Management at FAU.
Thanks to Prof Dirk Riehle, I get to do a guest lecture to the COSS masters class at...
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Lego, enterprise architecture and the job advert.
Who's your pick for 2021? pic.twitter.com/j8iHnzPjyR — Ethics in Bricks (@EthicsInBricks)
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Salesforce and Slack. Mind the gap.
I’m not one to try and get a razor sharp analysis out before I have had my tea and rashers. There...
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How not to work with HRTECH start-ups. The enterprise edition.
"Be cautious about generalizing, especially if it leads you to the conclusion that other people are...
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HRTech
M&A in HR TECH: Theory meets practice. iCIMS acquires EASYRECRUE.
M&A book M&A Strategy at Oxford: Last month I attended the first module of the Oxford Post...
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Zooming in on your front-end and our old friend the API: Some Advice for HRTECH product managers, designers and their long suffering users.
I have pontificated on APIs and Frontend strategy more than once, so I expect there will be some...
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A test for your time and attendance or HR Systems vendor
It’s astounding Time is fleeting Madness takes its toll But listen closely Not for very much longer...
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HR tech applications vendors. Build HR tech applications.
I admit, I’m spending too much time doom-scrolling in twitter, but between the wailing and gnashing...
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User interfaces are not just look and feel. Words matter.
I have seen more HR software user interfaces (UI) than almost anyone on this planet. I reckon there...
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Accessibility and the courts. HRTECH held to account?
T-shirt. Ironing is optional, accessibility isn’t. HRTECH and inaccessibility Over the course of...
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Melting HR bureaucracy
The tastiest employment contract I‘ve ever seen. German version here. We talk a lot about making HR...
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Happy 2nd anniversary.
After almost 20 years at SAP, Thomas and I decided that I become the first employee at Otter...
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HRTech
The difficult second album. Advice for HRTECH vendors.
Warning: long, rambling metaphor. Readers of my blog and twitter feed will have seen that I have an...
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On technical debt.
I solved a major domestic technical debt project last weekend. In my basement I had a box of...
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Made in Germany
This post originally appeared in German on the Haufe Personal website. I write a regular column...
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A wee thought on machine learning and data provenance.
This morning on twitter I read a rather amusing story.
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Joining the Immedis board
One of the first engagements I had after launching Otter Advisory was with Scottish Equity...
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On APIs and Onions.
I as I have said before, if were to have my time over as a product leader again, I would have been...
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HRTech
Rhinos and Enterprise Product Management. The Really Hot Interesting New Opportunity. Advice for Product Managers.
A chat with James Governor about HIPPOs caused me to search fruitlessly for a post that I knew I...
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AI kool-aid consumption: naivety and hubris?
The ability of AI technology and automation to discriminate at scale is well documented. Just this...
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Product demo advice from Delia and Nat.
Recently I saw two product demos. Both were about 15 minutes long, but they were very different....
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Doing the podcast/webcast/video thingy. With Jason Averbook.
I was an early adopter of podcasts. Craig Cmehil and I experimented with it back in the days of the...
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Microsoft do this very well. So should you. #MSBuild
I spent some time this evening watching the Microsoft build event, mainly James Phillips’ session...
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On niche specialization
I have spent most of my career working at, and analysing mega-vendors. Portfolios, markets, pricing...
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It’s all about the data
We have heard from many analysts that this is HR’s moment to shine. For HRTECH vendors too, this...
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Tech: Let’s follow and support, but not lead.
Yesterday I wrote about the need for HRTECH vendors (and users) to be cautious about building and...
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COVID-19 and your HR related applications. Suggestions for users and builders.
I felt there were more than enough folks posting advice about COVID-19 and HRTECH, so having made...
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Advice for #HRTECH marketing departments as of March 16th 2020.
A quick Google search of “never waste a crisis” attributes the quote to Winston Churchill. After a...
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Of seamless, seams, Conway and APIs.
Many enterprise software vendors promise seamless integration. This strikes me as both impossible...
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HRTech
Reflections from the Unit4 sales kickoff.
In my career I have attended a variety of sales kick offs, as an employee and as an external...
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Documentation and Safety.
Safety image (via flashbak) I recently read the latest book by Gene Kim, the Unicorn Project....
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The Future of Work Index by Acadian Ventures
I see lots of theories about what the HRTECH market is worth. The numbers range dramatically,...
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Have you got skills? Cornerstone acquires Clustree. Some thoughts.
Cornerstone acquires Clustree. This was announced today.
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HRTech
A book review: Trailblazer. Marc Benioff and Monica Langley.
I read all sorts of books, but I’m generally not a fan of CEO books. They are usually ghost written...
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Please welcome Michaela Schilling to Otter Advisory.
When I first joined SuccessFactors, Adam Kovalevsky kindly introduced me to his Executive...
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Test data discipline. A Wakanda moment.
I probably sound like a broken record on this, but don’t use characters from movies or famous...
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Pizza and how it will change the software industry for the better
This post has nothing to do with the dietary requirements of software engineers.
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Out of stealth mode (Utmost). And a trip to Orlando.
Since I started Otter Advisory late last year, I’ve worked with a variety of HRTECH vendors, and I...
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With great power comes great responsibility.
HRTECH has a curious relationship with law and regulations. On the one hand, it owes its genesis to...
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Doing one thing really well, and thinking about the science.
There is an obvious attraction to buying a broad suite solution. The benefits are oft repeated, and...
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Otter Advisory, a year in, and the year ahead.
Otter pondering It was almost a year ago that I launched Otter Advisory. Leaving a 90,000 employee...
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Epictetus and APIs (Clone)
First page of Discourses by Epictetus Don’t set your heart on so many things,” says Epictetus....
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Brexit, dropping HR IT in it.
#Dropbox tells me that “data transfers from the UK to the US will continue to be covered by our...
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It is done.
This morning, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, I successfully defended my PhD. I...
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Monkigras and accessibility
Over the years I have been to many software conference and events. And just before it was übercool...
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Using worktech and science for good.
Workplace harassment is evil. It can make lives a misery. Victims often feel unable to speak out....
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Blankets and employee engagement at Microsoft.
Microsoft is on a roll, on several levels. Share price, mojo, accessibility, cloud computing,...
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What is a user interface strategy and why might you need one?
History repeats itself, but not exactly the same way as it did last time around. HR technology is...
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HRTech
Attending Unleash, and some history.
It must have been nearly 8 years ago when I first talked to Marc Coleman and Peter Russell. They...
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Launching Otter Advisory
Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and ‘tis like a...
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